Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution has just launched 12 months of festivals, world-class talks, exhibitions, family fun and other activities to mark its 200 years at the centre of the city’s cultural life. It is inviting everyone to enjoy its bumper programme of Bicentenary year celebrations at its home in Queen Square throughout 2024, and the BRLSI Bicentenary also sees the launch of their new summer exhibition ‘The World Revealed.’
For those unaware, BRLSI is home to a rich collection of 150 000 artefacts, specimens and books of world renown, and the exhibition features a selection of the most remarkable and intriguing treasures housed in the Institution’s Queen Square home.
The exhibition ‘The World Revealed’ explores how items were collected and donated to the Institution since 1824, what this reveals of the shifts in our scientific, cultural and moral understanding over this period, and looks at who were the travellers and explorers who brought back objects from other cultures in distant parts of the world. Asking, why were they collected, and what motivated people to donate them to a public institution for preservation and display?
The exhibition also provides a fantastic opportunity to get up close and personal with some remarkable artefacts, some of which have not been seen by the public for more than a century.
Visitors can learn about how our understanding of life on earth developed with the discovery of well-preserved fossils in the 19th century, and how archaeologists added to our knowledge of Roman Britain by excavating and preserving objects from the everyday life of the times.
‘The World Revealed’ features rarely displayed objects including:
Jurassic fossils collected by the famous Mary Anning
A Roman brooch from 1st Century AD excavated in Lansdown
An ivory figurine from the ruins of Pompeii
Relics from the lost Franklin Arctic expedition
A phial of the brandy in which Lord Nelson’s body was preserved after the Battle of Trafalgar
The earliest known photographs of Bath dating from the 1850s
The exhibition runs until Saturday 12th October, and watch BRLSI’s website for some fantastic family activities which will accompany the exhibition throughout summer, and the chance to sign up to their new family newsletter, or to their regular exhibition tours.
For further information on BRLSI Collections and Activities visit the BRSLI website.
23 March - 12 October 2024
Monday to Saturday 10:00 - 16:00
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, 16-18 Queen Square
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